Vincent Gray Challenges Adrian Fenty by Ben Butler
Now that City Council Chairman Vincent Gray has announced his candidacy for mayor, just what does that mean for DC government workers? While it has often been said that anyone would be better than Fenty, the question we labor leaders should now be asking is just what do we want from Vincent Gray? Certainly Mr. Gray should not expect for us to blindly support him. We need to obtain specific commitments from this candidate. We need to know that he will not try to balance the city’s budget on the back’s of government workers and that he will continue to show the support for DC government workers that he has in the past as Chairman of the Council. Without specific commitments, we could end up with another mayor who says one thing and does another. We must make our interests and concerns known to Mr. Gray and be sure he is in our corner.
We must remember that as Director of the Department of Human Services, Mr. Gray loves to contract out. It would be most important during this time if the union contract would have a clause about not contracting out. Looking at the union contract they all are weak like H2O. More research needs to be conduct to have a stronger CBA.